


Three Caskets

by Dustseeing (dustseeing)



Category: Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare
Genre: Flashbacks, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 09:47:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3805918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustseeing/pseuds/Dustseeing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Portia reflects on her three caskets- lead, silver, gold.</p><p>A Shakespeare gift for shylock-the-shipper-fanboy.tumblr.com, via promptmeshakespeare</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Caskets

_All that glitters is not gold;_  
_Often have you heard that told:_  
_Many a man his life hath sold_  
_But my outside to behold:_  
_Gilded tombs do worms enfold._  
_Had you been as wise as bold,_  
_Young in limbs, in judgment old,_  
_Your answer had not been inscroll'd:_  
_Fare you well; your suit is cold._

Portia is six years old and her father is alive. He is in his workshop- his forbidden cave, his little court of lathe, chisel and rough sanding paper, as rough as his beard. He makes little marks in the wood- a chip here, a mark there. Portia has been told: never go in, never even sit on the threshold. This is her father’s place, his sanctuary, where he goes to hide himself from the human tides of Venice- channels of shining gold and murky water, debtors, creditors, the wealth of a thousand countries on which Venice floats. Instead, she sits, just in sight down the narrow corridor. He stands in the gloom and carves at the wood- clumsy strokes at first, and then slowly shaping it into whatever takes his fancy. Her Nonno was a carpenter, had passed these tools down to her Papa. She tries to picture her Nonno and all she could picture was the statue of an ancient saint in the chapel of Santa Lucia, a little wooden man, gilded save for a silver face. How different Papa is, in the silver light of a Venetian winter. Standing there he is flesh and blood- see, the chisel slips, scores his finger, he bleeds. Clumsy, her Nonno would agree. Papa would never have prospered as a carpenter. Instead he deals in paper and ink- little notches on paper, rigid in their columns. 

Before supper, before her Papa closes the ledger for the day, she is permitted to run a finger down an inky column, following the inscrutable numbers that dance from side to side. He explains them carefully, how one number affects another. His explanations are that of a businessman, not a father, and Portia doesn’t understand why a number must never cross the thick line that divides credit and debit, profit and loss. How can he explain the living market to her? With that beast he has made a fortune for her, though he still hopes for a son to leave it to. He stores up gold ducats, silver grossi, things that will last, not paper debts that the Venetian waters might wash away in inky floods. But Portia is six. She lives in the moment, the future means nothing to her. What is a ducat to her, but a counterfeit sun? What is a grossi but a leaden moon? Instead, he has made a doll for her, a solid little toy that dances whatever steps she makes it follow. Another time, he made a wooden hoop- she could have had the same from any cooper or toy-merchant, but this is her father’s gift. And now he is making a box- for her, he says. It will be her cassone one day, filled with linen for her wedding bed, wool for the winters, soft cloths and starched cloths and all ready to embrace her.

A puppet. A ring. A casket. She does not know it, but by these her life is measured out.

  
_How much unlike art thou to Portia!_  
_How much unlike my hopes and my deservings!_  
_'Who chooseth me shall have as much as he deserves.'_  
  
Portia is thirteen and her father is dying. He gasps on his deathbed, from which her mother has long fled. It is the Feast of the Ascension. Outside their palazzo, the walkways are filled with the endless crowds heading to see the Wedding to the Sea. The doge will drop a ring into the sea, and once again Venice and the Adriatic will be married, one body. The salt sea and the city are indivisible, they can no more be parted than the heavens from the earth, no more than flesh can be torn from the body without the spill of salt-blood and tears.  
  
Her father is dying. There are three coffins already prepared, made of lead, scalloped and decorated and waiting for them. One for her father. One for her mother. One for her. He says it tempts God’s hand to buy only the one. Portia looks at the three coffins, wonders which will be filled, which will lie empty. She imagines lying in one, eyes closed, hands in prayer, all the world closed off from her. It comforts her, for a short moment, to think of herself in its rigid embrace.  
  
Her father is dying. There is no justice in this. Her brother had died of the fever, her mother refuses to come to her father’s bed. In her prayers, she bargains. She will devote herself to God, if her father lives. She prays to Santa Lucia, will devote, like her, her virginity. She has no betrothed, so like Lucia she will give away her patrimony. She will make a pilgrimage to Catania. These are all easy choices, offerings so simple that they barely seem a sacrifice. They are not enough. Would she sacrifice her flesh? Her blood? She would, if she knew how to do so.  
  
Her father is dying. The ague sickness tears his throat with each breath. His eyes are fevered, his face sallow. He is being transmuted from base matter, leaden flesh turning to jaundiced gold. For fifteen days, the merchants and nobles of Venice have come to pay their respects- old Gratiano, the many Gobbos of the Castello sestiere, the Corrers and dalla Boccoles and the old lecher Volpe, who looked at her like a dog after sweetmeats. And not only Venetians but others from further afield- men her father had traded with, made rich in his trail. The Marquis of Montferrat had visited with his soldiers, who Portia’s father had funded to take back his lands. An Englishman, rough and brutish, had hoped to share a final glass of wine. But others seemed less sentimental. Men who once seemed sweet now swarmed around the house like mosquitoes. Her father knows it. He had hoped to protect her, this fierce child of his flesh, and now they will come for her- no, not even for her but for her dowry. The wealth he has built has become a prison for her, a trap of gold and silver, and he cannot think but she will drown in it.  


He reaches for her, and Portia comes close. He will not see her transmute from childish dross, but by some subtle alchemy the prison of wealth he has given her shall become a tower of defence. Not for a moment does he wonder whether she is strong enough to protect herself.

  
_You that choose not by the view,_  
_Chance as fair and choose as true!_  
_Since this fortune falls to you,_  
_Be content and seek no new,_  
_If you be well pleased with this_  
_And hold your fortune for your bliss,_  
_Turn you where your lady is_  
_And claim her with a loving kiss._  
  
Portia is nineteen and her father is dead. Her mother is dead. She wonders if she might secretly be dead, and nobody has noticed. She is alone of her house and she has ceased to mourn it. She lies on the floor of her bed chamber, ear to the boards, and listens to the high tide taking over the lowest level of the house, water lapping at her foundations as the servants seek to salvage what they can. The floods come from Africa, urged by the humid sirocco breeze. Nature has taken on human form, and the desert winds bring a Prince of Morocco for her hand. She goes to the casement, opens it-  
  
\- and listens to the silver sounds of celebration, and pomp and majesty on the docks. Argosies and barges are unloading their courtiers, come from the edge of the sea, bringing a Prince of Aragon for her hand. It is carnival, all along the canal are masked creatures, bulls and peacocks, St Mark’s winged lions, swan-winged women and elephantine men. Around them are the commedia players, and she can see a lecherous old Pantalone chasing a poor Francesca, the Innamorati proclaiming their love, all locked in to the thrill of the story that can only ever play out the same way. There is a carnival game- throw the ring, win a prize- and she sees a wooden doll handed over to a grinning lover, who fate has favoured today.  
  
Her heart is beating, the game she has put off for years can no longer be ignored. Portia runs to her father’s bedroom, to safety. The room is covered in years of dust, the last remnants of his mortal flesh, and there by the foot of the bed are the two caskets he carved for her, one gilded, one silvered, and the last, the lead box that waits for her. The other two coffins are long gone- one for her father, one for her mother. It is waiting for her. Surrounded by money, she knows she is a dead thing, she is not fit to breed. Where are these thoughts coming from? Some alchemy of the mind is taking place, thoughts and laws and prayers infest her flesh like parasites. They are coming for her, for her golden flesh and for her silver blood and there is nothing to save her save three boxes, one of lead and one of silver and one of gold, and which is she? Below there is laughter, strange and foreign voices, Nerissa is meeting the first of the suitors, they are wading through the passageway below-  
  
She pulls open the lid, and sees herself there. What had she expected? Nothing, she realises, nothing inside but an emptiness, and yet she finds she already fills it. Portia hides with Portia, there in the lead box, where she should have been long ago. Who would desire her, in this sarcophagus, this flesh-eater? And she sees her father’s plan. Not a rigid legal trap, but a prize-game like a carnival. He has hazarded her life away on a guessing game, trusting to the mercy of God.  
  
She rises from the grave. Her thoughts have turned from lead to silver to gold.


End file.
